Information spillovers in asset markets with correlated values

We study information spillovers in a dynamic setting with correlated assets owned by privately informed sellers. In the model, a trade of one asset can provide information about the value of other assets. Importantly, the information content of trading behavior is endogenously determined. We show that this endogeneity leads to multiple equilibria when assets are sufficiently correlated. The equilibria are ranked in terms of both trade volume and efficiency. The model has implications for policies targeting post-trade transparency. We show that introducing post-trade transparency can increase or decrease welfare and trading volume depending on the asset correlation, equilibrium being played, and the composition of market participants.Asriyan acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness Grant (ECO2014-54430-P) and the Barcelona GSE Seed Grant. Fuchs gratefully acknowledges support from the ERC Grant 681575

Information Spillovers in Asset Markets with Correlated Values

Abstract We study information spillovers in a dynamic setting with privately informed traders and correlated asset values. A trade of one asset (or lack thereof) can provide information about the quality of other assets in the market. We show that, because the information content of trading behavior is endogenously determined, there exist multiple equilibria when the correlation between asset values is sufficiently high and the market is sufficiently transparent. The equilibria are ranked in terms of both trade volume and efficiency. We study the implications for policies that target market transparency as well as the market's ability to aggregate information. Total welfare is higher when the market is fully transparent than when it is fully opaque. However, both welfare and trading activity can decrease in the degree of market transparency. If traders have asymmetric access to transaction data, transparency levels the playing field, reduces the rents of more informed traders, but may reduce total welfare. Finally, we show that information is not necessarily efficiently aggregated as the number of informed traders becomes arbitrarily large

Balance sheet recessions with informational and trading frictions

We consider a model of the balance sheet channel à la Kiyotaki and Moore (1997) but allow agents to trade claims contingent on aggregate states. We show that the interaction of information dispersion about aggregate states with trading frictions in secondary claims markets generates mispricing of aggregate risk, distorts the demand for state-contingent claims and limits aggregate risk-sharing, thereby giving rise to the balance sheet channel. The magnitude of aggregate fluctuations becomes tied to the severity of information-trading frictions and, as they vanish, the balance sheet channel disappears. Thus, the model suggests that the functioning of secondary claims markets has important implications for business cycles. Importantly, the laissez-faire equilibrium is constrained inefficient because information-trading frictions generate rent-extraction in secondary claims markets. Optimal policy targets the inefficiency at its source by promoting both issuance and trade of state-contingent claims in markets

Balance sheet channel with information-trading frictions in secondary markets

This article develops a theory of the balance sheet channel that places a central emphasis on the liquidity of secondary markets for macro-contingent claims. We show that the presence of dispersed information and imperfect competition in secondary markets, interacted with financial constraints, results in mispricing and misallocation of aggregate risk, distorts aggregate investment, and exacerbates asset price and output volatility. The magnitude of balance sheet amplification effects becomes endogenously tied to the severity of market frictions, which likely vary over time and across economies. The laissez-faire equilibrium is constrained inefficient due to a novel externality originating from rent-extracting behaviour of agents in secondary markets. Optimal corrective policy boosts secondary market liquidity through subsidies to trade in macro-contingent claims, which enhances aggregate risk-sharing and stabilizes the business cycle.I acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness Grant (ECO2014-54430-P), the Barcelona GSE Seed Grant and the Generalitat de Catalunya AGAUR Grant (2017SGR1393)

Essays in Macroeconomics

The research presented in this dissertation has been motivated by the Great Recession that has shown us once again how the financial system can amplify and propagate relatively mild economic shocks into larger scale recessions. In the past decade, we witnessed what many may call the worst crisis since the Great Depression that appears to have resulted from a perverse interaction between real estate markets and borrowers' balance sheets. The three chapters of this dissertation are an attempt to shed light on the mechanisms that may have allowed for such perverse effects to arise. I believe that to understand crisis episodes such as the recent one, it is imperative to study why some economic agents become overly exposed to risk, why financial markets fail to function at times, and what policy makers can do to ameliorate the incidence and repercussions of such adverse events.In Chapter 1, "A Theory of Balance Sheet Recessions with Informational and Trading Frictions," I propose a novel theory to rationalize the limited risk-sharing that drives balance sheet recessions as a result of informational and trading frictions in financial markets. I show that borrowers and creditors will find it costly to share macroeconomic risk in environments where creditors value the liquidity of financial claims but where information about the future states of the economy is dispersed and the secondary markets for financial claims feature search frictions. As a result, borrowers will optimally choose to retain disproportionate exposures to macroeconomic risk on their balance sheets, and adverse shocks will be amplified through the balance sheet channel. I show that the magnitude of this amplification becomes closely linked to the level of information dispersion and the severity of search frictions in financial markets. In this setting, I study the implications of the theory for macro-prudential regulation and find that subsidizing contingent write-downs of borrowers' liabilities can be welfare improving.In Chapter 2, "Informed Intermediation over the Cycle," a joint work with Victoria Vanasco, we construct a dynamic model of financial intermediation in which changes in the information held by financial intermediaries generate asymmetric credit cycles as the ones documented by Reinhart and Reinhart (2010). We model financial intermediaries as "expert'' agents who have a unique ability to acquire information about firm fundamentals. While the level of "expertise'' in the economy grows in tandem with information that the "experts'' possess, the gains from intermediation are hindered by informational asymmetries. We find the optimal financial contracts and show that the economy inherits not only the dynamic nature of information flow, but also the interaction of information with the contractual setting. We introduce a cyclical component to information by supposing that the fundamentals about which experts acquire information are stochastic. While persistence of fundamentals is essential for information to be valuable, their randomness acts as an opposing force and diminishes the value of expert learning. Our setting then features economic fluctuations due to waves of "confidence'' in the intermediaries' ability to allocate funds profitably.In Chapter 3, "Credit Crises, Liquidity Traps, and Demand Externalities," I extend the work of Eggertsson and Krugman (2012) to study welfare implications of households' consumption-saving decisions in New Keynesian economies with incomplete asset markets. My contribution is to show that due to aggregate demand externalities the amount of debt pre-contracted in such economies is generally excessive, and that the amount of "over-borrowing" is increasing in the Central Banker's inflation-aversion. This externality arises because an individual household does not internalize its contribution to the overall fragility as the latter is only a function of aggregate indebtedness of all borrowers. These findings suggest that macro-prudential policies geared towards limiting household leverage can indeed be welfare improving

Security design in non-exclusive markets with asymmetric information

We revisit the classic problem of a seller (e.g. firm) who is privately informed about her asset and needs to raise funds from uninformed buyers (e.g. investors) by issuing securities backed by her asset cash flows. In our setting, buyers post menus of contracts to screen the seller, but the seller cannot commit to accept contracts from only one buyer, i.e., markets are non-exclusive. We show that an equilibrium of this screening game always exists, it is unique and features semi-pooling allocations for a wide range of parameters. In equilibrium, the seller tranches her asset cash flows into a debt security (senior tranche) and a levered-equity security (junior tranche). Whereas the seller of a high quality asset only issues her senior tranche, the seller of a low quality asset issues both tranches but to distinct buyers. Consistent with this, whereas the senior tranche is priced at pooling valuation, the junior tranche is priced at low valuation. Our theory's positive predictions are consistent with recent empirical evidence on issuance and pricing of mortgage-backed securities, and we analyze its normative implications within the context of recent reforms aimed at enhancing transparency of financial markets

Security design in non-exclusive markets with asymmetric information

Data de publicació electrònica: 6 d'abril de 2023We study the problem of a seller (e.g. a bank) who is privately informed about the quality of her asset and wants to exploit gains from trade with uninformed buyers (e.g. investors) by issuing securities backed by her asset cash flows. In our setting, buyers post menus of contracts to screen the seller, but the seller cannot commit to trade with only one buyer, i.e. markets are non-exclusive. We show that non-exclusive markets behave very differently from exclusive ones: (1) separating contracts are never part of equilibrium; (2) mispricing of claims faced by the seller is always greater than in exclusive markets; (3) there is always a semi-pooling equilibrium where all sellers issue the same debt contract priced at average-valuation, and sellers of low-quality assets issue remaining cash flows at low-valuation; (4) market liquidity can be higher or lower than in exclusive markets, but (5) the average quality of originated assets is always lower. Our model’s predictions are consistent with empirical evidence on the issuance and pricing of mortgage-backed securities, and we use the theory to evaluate recent reforms aimed at enhancing transparency and exclusivity in markets

The good, the bad, and the complex: product design with imperfect information

Includes supplementary materials for the online appendix.We study the joint determination of product quality and complexity. In our model complexity affects how difficult it is for an agent to acquire information about product quality. An agent can accept or reject a product proposed by a designer, who can affect the quality and the complexity of the product. We find that complexity is not a necessary feature of low-quality products. An increase in designer–agent alignment leads to more complex but better-quality products. However, higher product demand or lower competition among designers leads to more complex and lower-quality products. We relate our findings to the existing empirical evidence.Asriyan and Vanasco acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through the Severo Ochoa Programme for Centres of Excellence in R&D (CEX2019-000915-S) and from the Generalitat de Catalunya through the CERCA and SGR Programme (2017-SGR-13933). Asriyan acknowledges financial support from the Spanish State Research Agency and the European Social Fund (RYC2019-027607-I/AEI/10.13039/501100011033). Vanasco acknowledges financial support from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (INFOMAK—948432)

Aggregation and design of information in asset markets with adverse selection

How effectively does a decentralized marketplace aggregate information that is dispersed throughout the economy? We study this question in a dynamic setting where sellers have private information that is correlated with an unobservable aggregate state. In any equilibrium, each seller's trading behavior provides an informative and conditionally independent signal about the aggregate state. We ask whether the state is revealed as the number of informed traders grows large. Surprisingly, the answer is no; we provide conditions under which information aggregation necessarily fails. In another region of the parameter space, aggregating and non-aggregating equilibria coexist. We solve for the optimal information policy of a social planner who observes trading behavior. We show that non-aggregating equilibria are always constrained inefficient. The optimal information policy Pareto improves upon the laissez-faire outcome by concealing information about trading volume when it is sufficiently high.Asriyan acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, through the Severo Ochoa Programme for Centres of Excellence in R&D (SEV-2015-0563) and Juan de la Cierva (IJCI-2017-31808), and from the Generalitat de Catalunya AGAUR Grant (SGR 2017-1393). Fuchs acknowledges support from the ERC Grant 681575